Which really did come first?… OK, I can answer my own question: application governance came first. IT has always been very organized and very linear. They document well. But they are primarily focused on the widgets – the apps and other sparkly things. “Ooo,glittery.”

Accountability is often lousy. Everyone’s thinking it, I’m just saying it.

Intranet and portal governance came later when the other parts of the business, namely communication, realized that no one was really ensuring strategically-focused decision-making, people processes and accountability. Lately we’ve added the concepts of culture change and adoption in there too. But the question I put out there this week is:

“Which is embedded in which?”

Should IT application governance be embedded in the broader Intranet/Portal, or just Web, governance model? One person who responded to my query on Twitter said he thinks that you have to have good app governance to ensure up-time – read “SLA” – since with nothing to access there is nothing to do. Fine. I’ll try not to take for granted that the tools are actually there.

Still, without strategically-focused decision-making, how do you know you have the right tools? Are there too many of the same types of tools? Which ones do we use when? Once you make a decision what capabilities are required, that’s when the IT governance process should kick in.

Up to that point and after deployment, it’s the broader Web governance that should be at play. If this model is broken, or nonexistent as is often the case, you’re organization won’t get full value from investments made in applications, tools and the IT governance process.

So, if we look at it this way, the IT governance process is connected, and maybe even subservient, to the broader Web governance model. But, this is just my opinion.